"The food is too good. What’s wrong with good food? Well, here’s what’s wrong: there’s too much of it. Three meals a day. Free. Cooked by award-winning chefs. And too many choices: salads, entrees, desserts, vegetarian food, soups, whole grains, usually a second dessert, organic stuff, barbeque, ice cream, fresh-squeezed orange juice. For someone like me with zero gastronomic self-control, this supposed “benefit” or “perk” is a complete disaster. Why doesn’t the FDA step in?"
Is he complaining that he's getting too fat from eating at Facebook's buffet?
> I’m a hobby home chef so I guess my optimizations are different.
Yep there you go. If it's something you enjoy, you almost want to slow things down a bit.
> It’s so easy to fall into the pattern of just getting delicious restaurant food all the time
Absolutely. Virtually all of my friends & family are 100% addicted to other people cooking & bringing them food now.
I try to eat out rarely, especially any sort of cheap fast food. The quality & nutrition you get out of a $5 burger these days is absolutely appalling.
> food from the laboratories of Chef Boyardee is not alluring for people who haven't already acquired the taste.
And that's the most insidious part (and why obesity tends to paradoxically trend up toward lower income households). This cheap, shitty food is extremely attractive to the people most vulnerable to the addictive behaviors; people who already lack most luxuries, are often short on extra time or energy (i.e. working two jobs), and people who work with children in the household (often too tired or want time/energy to devote to their children) and don't cook. You can call it irresponsible or what have you (as many do) but I mean, you go out and work a 12 hour day and then go home and spend an hour prepping a healthy meal. Then do it tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.
> He’s more of a believer that we don’t really think about or even consciously care about the vast majority of our meals.
I'm busy. I'm not a good cook. I'm even worse at "keeping a kitchen". I rarely have food around. I want to make food a priority, but it loses against my startup, bouldering, and photography.
I often find myself in scenarios where I /need/ to eat, but have no food. Getting burritos and making pasta gets old. I /love/ eating good food, but for a number of meals, something that takes the thinking out of it would be good for me.
> Maybe this is the HN bubble but eating is not just about sustenance.
It is only about sustenance for some people. Many (probably most) people enjoy a lot of the food preparation and eating process. Others, myself included, do not. Maybe it's because my sense of taste or smell is stunted. Maybe it's because I'm socially underdeveloped. So be it. It's certainly not because I'm a workaholic tech employee, even if I currently am, because it has been the case as long as I can remember. Whatever the reason, I really don't enjoy the experience of preparing or eating food.
>The craziest thing to me in all this is, I love food. Like, obsessed. Who’s with me? My point is: if eating is literally one of our favourite things ever, are we willing to pay adequately for it? Do we value it sufficiently? Honestly, seems to me like, if there’s one industry that should be profitable, it’s restaurants. One, we have to eat. Two, we love to eat!
I'm wondering if there is some personality differences at play here. The author loves food and probably eats out regularly. I like food, but I see it as more of a means of sustaining life than something to be enjoyed (I typically eat the exact same thing every single day). I only go out to eat about once a month. Am I an anomaly, or is part of restaurants' problem that a significant part of the population is not in love with food?
> - I'm not constantly surrounded by free junk food.
I worked for a while in a "normie" office (not a tech company) and I was blown away by the amount of junk food people ate. In some areas each row of desks had piles of junk food at the ends and there would constantly be cake for people's birthdays etc.
Other places I've seen offer a "fully stocked" kitchen (read, junk food) as a perk. Why the hell would I want a constant supply of crap I can easily afford to buy but don't because it's unhealthy? I consider myself to have pretty decent self control, but some people don't and it's like offering crack to an addict. I don't even agree with vending machines at work.
> those two people likely don't eat remotely as well
You then mention chocolate truffles. Personally if I had my employer providing ridiculous good food for free, I’ll likely live less healthy because I will eat those nice unhealthy things every day.
If I am prepping my own food I have complete control over what I buy and can choose _not_ to buy unhealthy things.
Also in my experience a reason why food prepared by a chef tastes so good: more fat used.
I assume that Google and Facebook canteens (well that’s what they are) are better than the ones offered by companies here in Germany, but I think I would still gain weight.
> but too often you end out with a strange mix of stuff on your plate
Bingo. When presented with a buffet, people (myself included) usually have a fear of "missing out" the good stuff, so they just load a little bit of everything to their plate. At a buffet, you usually don't have the information about (1) how filling an individual ingredient is and (2) how well they go together. So each and every time, you end up with too much food which doesn't really combine. In the end, you leave too full and slightly unsatisfied. On a menu, the individual menus or plates have been tested for months against the cooks and guests, and the kitchen has adjusted plates which were always returned with leftovers to be smaller and/or removed meals that led to too much complaints
So basically, on a buffet you will get an untested meal designed by someone usually not competent enough to design it (you), every time.
> The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers.
I will have to disagree. Maybe this is a cultural thing (I'm from Brazil) but on business days I mostly refuse to have lunch in restaurants that don't offer nutritional food options, and I'm not alone in this matter, the majority of my team mates also care about their diet. Those who don't care about it and eat junk food at work every day are the exception.
Hence, restaurants have the incentive to serve healthier food in order to attract customers like me and my team mates.
That's not to say that I don't like junky food. I love to grab a beer and a burger, but I grant myself that treat at most once a week, not more than that.
> I just want to eat and I want to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. For a nice meal, I'll go to a restaurant. I'm not interested in learning how to prepare my own food better, and all of these comments and the OP seems to forget that.
> You have cooking, I have coffee, programming, and looking at birds.
I used to be like this, eat as quickly as I could and whatever was quick enough that filled the hole in my stomach. You will likely pay for this later, and will have discussions with your dr about food freshness, processed foods and how horrible the food at even “heath food” restaurants is for you. Unless you want to live your life with gastrointestinal issues, change your attitude about cooking.
It depends what you are used to eat. A few years ago I would have agreed that pizza and Soda is great.
But today after changing my live style I cook for myself fresh vegetables from CSA and small bio farms I do not like pizza and all the crap any more. That goes so far that I can not go to restaurants anymore, because 95% of them serve crap for my todays taste.
> I know many people care deeply about food and like to cook, but if someone let me just exclude food I hate and shipped a randomised meal every day at a reasonable price, I'd be a happy customer.
> You go to an "all" you can eat buffet but you know that they will object if you actually start eating ridiculous amount.
If they have a problem with me devouring literally every slice of bacon they have, then they can remove my fat ass from the premises at their leisure. Hope they brought a forklift.
> I can eat healthy at home; I come to industry events for the fucking pizza.
Really? In most realms outside IT, that's the food you buy when you consider the people eating it not worthy of actual catering. I can understand wanting pizza if the alternative is salad and water, but still.
Free food, including meals. If Facebook is anything like Google, some single people were literally using that for every meal and snack 5/7 days per week. It's tasty, nutritious food, and you don't have to prepare it or do dishes. Sure, an adult should be able to take care of this on their own, but this is a major perk, not just a box of granola bars on a shelf. It might cost them $100 per week (~$5,000 per year) to match their food intake via cooking at home. Much more if they start ordering a lot of take-out. That's a fair chunk of compensation they're not getting anymore. This absence is not at the top of my list of pandemic or employer complaints but I can see how it might be near the top of someone else's.
Is he complaining that he's getting too fat from eating at Facebook's buffet?
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